


callisto

by uraa



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, PURPLE PROSE YALL, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 07:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uraa/pseuds/uraa
Summary: He sometimes feels the rush of a fall and a break just on the edge of sleep. Often he can’t discern whether it’s a normal quirk of the sleep cycle or an aftereffect of reaching for Sorey’s hand on the bed, and, after a few moments of searching, realizing he’ll find nothing but empty sheets.Sorey doesn't die when he goes to sleep, but Mikleo feels like he has.





	callisto

**Author's Note:**

> uh i wrote this a whole ass year and a half ago and its uhhhhhhhh Very pretentious and contrived so pls dont take it too seriously. the original title was loss.jpg
> 
> also its set in the aftermath of the end of the game bc i felt like there was probably a lot of emotional shit goin down after that. like so much happened in the finale i cant believe literally mikleos mom and his grandpa both died wtf

I. loss

Mikleo feels it at night. 

It snaps around his ribs and petrifies the marrow, until they’re so brittle that he thinks they might break with a breath. He keeps his inhales slow and his exhales slower, shallow, so he stays whole. His lungs scream to break free and he almost wants to; to take a breath so deep and brimming with life that his chest shatters apart, like the adrenaline-slow moment as a teacup first hits the ground and begins to burst.

Like the teacup, cracks spreading up the handle from the point of impact, its weight carrying the breakage through, he sometimes feels the rush of a fall and a break just on the edge of sleep. Often he can’t discern whether it’s a normal quirk of the sleep cycle or an aftereffect of reaching for Sorey’s hand on the bed, and, after a few moments of searching, realizing he’ll find nothing but empty sheets.

But who is he kidding. It’s not the issue of breaking, he’s broken already: quietly, almost without noticing. He sees Sorey in the breathless, endless blue of Elysia’s sky, in the syrupy light that trickles through Mt. Mabinogio’s ruins, in the sound of the first wash of a downpour over their house. And at first he doesn’t think it’s sorrow at all, because with it comes sweetness, and memories so fond that he doesn’t realize he’s smiling until it hurts. But it hurts, that’s the thing. It renders him nearly immobile sometimes. Mikleo’s always thought that sorrow and joy are almost the same, when the feeling is strong enough. 

…

What is loneliness?

He’s been over this already. All bright, piercing things: the sun, harsh and high in the thin mountain air; the stars, a scattered tattoo from when a needle inked the sky with light. The moon, in a different way. Moon, still and lovely and round, soft liver spots clinging to its surface. Moon pulls tide, tide pulls seraph. Moon, empty.

Seraph, empty.

 

II. mothers

“But he is there,” says Lailah one afternoon, sun warming their backs and glasses of iced tea in hand. “You see him all around you because he is all around you. He’s with Maotelus, and Maotelus is with Glenwood. He’s probably trying to say hello.”

He’s trying to say hello, Mikleo thinks, and his breath stutters and sticks in this throat. He doesn’t want to fall apart in front of someone he respects as much as Lailah, but the first tear is the first drop of water through a crack in a dam. Mikleo doesn’t know why he’s crying as he struggles to breathe enough to stop up the big, heaving sobs that push through his throat. He’s just never even thought that Sorey might still be thinking about him, caring for him, missing him, just as much as Mikleo is.

Lailah rubs his back and offers him sips of tea. She brushes away tears with her cool, slender fingers. “You’re so young,” she says, as means of consolation. “You were both so young. The first year is hard, Mikleo, but it gets better. It got better for me.”

Lailah is still standing after the death of her shepherd; Mikleo figures he can remain standing for the years until his—theirs—wakes up. He takes a shuddering breath and swallows down his tea with shaking hands. The water steadies his breathing, caps the fawn-shakiness in his body. It always has. He opens his mouth to speak, and hiccups.

Lailah’s gaze softens. “It’s not just about him, is it?”

“I don’t know,” says Mikleo, his voice raw and grating in his throat. The bubble of feeling in his chest expands so fast it pushes the individual emotions together. “I don’t know. Yes. Gramps and my mother. Dealing with that is harder without him, I guess.”

“They were your family.” 

“Yes.” Mikleo looks at her for a long, careful moment. “But not all of it.”

Lailah smiles, and Mikleo thinks he sees a soft kind of fire in it: it’s not purifying, not avenging, made not for battle but for the hearth. “Yes. Not all of it.”

…

The staff is beautiful. It weighs cool and heavy in his hand, no different than most staffs feel to him, made of wood smooth as oil. The green gems in its head glow as the afternoon sun hits it, at rest at the foot of his bed.

The pattern is like his circlet. Matching set, Mikleo thinks. Something else is with the thought too; bitterness, or sorrow. Or frustration. Or grief. 

The gold of his circlet is warm, like it usually is. He still puts it on every morning because he feels like it would be a betrayal not to. He understands her--he let her die because he understands.

It’s hard to grieve for her, although he knows he should. He knows so little, though. What songs did she hum in the morning? How did she make her tea? What was her favorite color? Maybe it was blue, like homespun cloth and earthenware. Blue like a mother is. Blue like him, like hope. She had been full of so much hope, at least it seemed to him. She had so much love for the shepherd and his sub-lord.

He was her child; of course she loved him. 

Did she love him?

Did he love her? Does he now?

He traces the lines of his circlet, and then, in a sudden fit, jams the metal into his forehead, hard enough that it hurts. It should hurt. She and Gramps are dead. This and the staff are the only things he has left—it should hurt. Why wouldn’t it hurt.

 

III. siblings

He’s in a haze, the world slippery and too quick around him, when Edna comes to visit. 

“Let’s go to the ruins, Meebo,” she says. The yellow of her dress hurts to look at. “The new ones up north. Or I guess you’ve been to them, already.”

Mikleo shakes his head, slowly, like shaking honey from his hair. He hasn’t left Elysia for weeks now, and he wants to keep it that way. Here, it’s easier to pretend that he’s not Mikleo at all--not the seraph who helped Sorey defeat the Lord of Calamity, not the owner of the name he had called to armatize in battle. He can still feel the rush and pull of it, inseparably tied to the memory of Sorey’s voice around the words. Luzrov Rulay, he thinks, remembering the warm timbre so intimately that it’s almost like hearing it out loud. It’s easier to separate himself from the loss if he pretends he never heard it at all.

But it isn’t out loud. Sorey is still sleeping, and Mikleo is still, largely, alone.

It’s hard to read Edna’s expression. Her eyes narrow, and she jabs him once in the side with her umbrella—he takes it full on the ribs. It hurts, but not enough to warrant a reaction, and Edna’s expression grows even darker in response. She needles him with short, hard blows until he flinches out of his chair, back against the table like a herd animal cornered by a wolf.

“Let’s go,” she says, not bothering to see if Mikleo will follow as she walks out the door. 

“I don’t want to,” he says, hearing the petulance in his voice. He presses his back into the table. “You go if you want.”

“Let’s go.” Her voice is steely and she doesn’t turn her head, as if she’s speaking to the warbling sunlight that spills off of the roofs of Elysia’s houses and not to him, crowded in with the shadows of his kitchen. “I’ll force you if I have to.”

He thinks he’s left a good chunk of himself still sitting in the chair, or even in the bed he had lingered in this morning. The effort to step away from the support of the table is gargantuan. “Why?” he asks. “They’re just ruins.”

“Just ruins?” Anger doesn’t look ugly on Edna like it does on others; instead, it gathers and anchors in her body like the breathless moment before a landslide. “Since when did they become ‘just ruins’ to you, Meebo?”

“He was always the one who liked them,” he says, an obvious excuse. The lie twists in his chest—he’d had plenty of passion of his own, once. “Why— you’re so upset.” 

“He’s not dead!” Edna’s voice is raised with emotion, a rare thing. “You act like he is, but he’ll come back. He’s hard at work, and you’re here, sulking in Elysia.”

The resentment that shoots up inside of him is half-borne of fear and guilt. She’s right, he knows on some level. “Sulking?” At least anger feels different from longing, from the overwhelming loneliness that comes after cooking too much for one and seeing human medicine in the bathroom cabinet and adding another blanket to the bed because it doesn’t have Sorey’s warmth. “I would gladly take sulking over this—”

“It’s pathetic,” says Edna, no give or warmth to her voice. “You’re not the only one who’s lost someone. Do you see Lailah or Zaveid hiding in their house all day?” She bites her lip and it somehow looks angry instead of vulnerable. “And Eizen was my brother.” The implication is clear: did you ever see me breaking down? Do you see me?

She’s right. He’s not dead, as much as it feels like he is. But it feels—

He feels—

Mikleo opens his mouth. “I...”

“Ruins,” says Edna. “You’re going to have to start living eventually. I won’t say it again. Let’s go.”

Mikleo shuts his mouth and drags all his will into following her. He goes.

…

Appropriately, Zaveid finds him on a windblown hill overlooking Aifread’s Hunting Ground. He settles next to him without a word. It’s cold up there for spring, the wind so relentless that when Mikleo faces directly into it it’s hard to breathe. Zaveid doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, shirtless as usual, and when Mikleo glances over his arms are smooth and free of goosebumps.

Stretched below them are green hills outlined against the gray sky, a cold barren green, although the grass is thriving. This place is sort of lonely, none of the lush rolling landscapes of Hyland, and it’s quiet here, although the wind is rushing noisily through his ears. The hills look quiet. It feels quiet. He’s found that he doesn’t mind it so much anymore, especially with someone beside him.

After what he guesses is an appropriate amount of time, Mikleo says, “Hello, Zaveid.”

The wind stills around them and Zaveid turns to face him, face lit up as if he had just noticed he was there. “Mikky! Long time no see.” That’s a blessing of Zaveid’s, his way to start a conversation like nothing had ever happened.

Mikleo rolls his eyes. “A couple months isn’t that long, especially for you.”

“You saying I’m old?” says Zaveid with mock-offense. “You think this,” he flexes and Mikleo rolls his eyes again, “looks old?”

“No, of course not.” It feels good to joke around like this, to feel what he knows is a teasing smile pulling at his lips as he glances away. “Not at all.”

“Hm,” grunts Zaveid. “Not like you’re not going to get up there too, Mikky.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m an infant, I know.”

“A baby. A fetus. A zygote.” Zaveid pauses, Mikleo’s snicker filling the silence. “Did pretty damn good for a zygote, though.” His hand comes to rest on his shoulder, strong and warm. “Don’t think I could have done what you did at eighteen. You’re a smart kid.”

“...Thanks,” says Mikleo, a little taken aback. 

“Too smart to sit around doing nothing but wait for Sorey to wake up.”

Oh. So that’s what this is. Mikleo kicks a pebble off the bluff and watches it disappear into the grass below. “You really came all the way here just to lecture me? I feel like I already got this talk from Lailah.”

Zaveid laughs. “Well, yeah. We were pretty worried about you. You and Alisha and Rose especially.” Mikleo frowns, and Zaveid laughs again, rubbing the back of his neck. “Take it from your elders, kid. Losing someone sucks. It’s pretty hard when you’re young.”

“I know that,” says Mikleo, unable to keep the ice out of his voice. “You think I don’t know that? Of course it sucks, like it’s not going to hurt to— to—“ He kicks another rock off the hill for good measure. “Fuck. Of course it does.”

Zaveid nods, silent for a few long seconds. He picks up a rock and turns it in his hands, considering, feeling it scrape rough over the rough skin of his fingers. “Well, we’re not earth seraphs,” he says, “but.” And chucks it. 

Mikleo watches it sail into the low-hanging clouds with wide eyes, surprised out of his anger. “That went pretty far.”

“Well, yeah,” says Zaveid. “You’ve seen what these guns can do.” Mikleo has to crack a smile at that, and Zaveid presses a rock into his hands. “C’mon, try it. As far as you can throw.”

Mikleo gives him a reproachful look, but he winds up and hurls the rock into the sky.

“Well?” says Zaveid.

Mikleo shrugs. It’s pretty satisfying, actually, the feeling of the rock leaving his hand, its clean descent into the hills below them, the stretch and pull of the muscles in his arm and shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says, already scooping up another handful of pebbles.

“Pretty good, right?” Zaveid gathers a handful of his own and starts throwing beside him, his words punctuated with grunts of exertion. “Needed something to do when Eizen went all. Eizen. Edna’s better at this than I am, obviously.”

Mikleo keeps quiet, winding up and throwing with even rhythm. He’s better at it than he thought he would be—guess him and Sorey’s training hadn’t been for nothing. Prepare, throw, watch. Almost like an arte, the collective rain of little white pebbles sprinkling down on the grass.

They throw until they’re both doubled over, panting. Mikleo’s arm aches and he has sweat trickling down the small of his back, the wind not quite as cold anymore, but his chest feels empty in a way it hadn’t before. It’s a good empty, still and cleansed, like crying but without the shock.

Zaveid grins at him, and then looks down at his feet, the expression slipping away. “You know, I made a promise to Eizen,” he says. “Think I told you guys about it back when we met. I said I would kill him if he ever became a dragon.” His words are matter-of-fact, unflinching. “Couldn’t keep it, though.”

Mikleo swallows. “Yeah.”

“You made a promise too, didn’t you? Don’t even have to kill anyone to keep it.”

Mikleo jerks his head up, not wanting to know how Zaveid knew about that. “Yeah. I mean— yeah.”

“Promises are a pretty special thing. And I couldn’t just let you break yours.” A rueful smile creeps onto his face as he looks up, and Mikleo hopes he isn’t imagining the proud light in his eyes. “Jeez, you’re so damn talented, Mikleo,” he says. “You’ve got so much potential. Don’t waste it waiting for him.”

“Oh,” says Mikleo. “I’m not— I didn’t—“

“Don’t be like me. Don’t leave him disappointed when he wakes up.” Zaveid claps him once on the back, hard, and starts to walk back down the hill. “Your dream will live on, right?” he calls over his shoulder. “See you around, Mikky.”

Mikleo loosens the fist around his remaining pebbles, feeling them unstick from his damp hand. “See you,” he says.

… 

“Mikleo!” 

It’s been a long day in the painfully vivid, bustling marketplace of Pendrago, which is why he’s caught off guard by the voice directed at him through the cooling late-afternoon air. He scans the vendors’ stalls around him, the probing fingers of a headache pushing at the back of his eyes. 

His eyes catch on a familiar black and white robe and his breath stumbles out of his mouth. He feels something in his chest pull at the sight, reaching out at the familiarity in childish, eager hope— but it just makes the discord of seeing red hair where brown should be even stronger. 

Rose’s face falls; she must be mirroring his expression. He feels a cut of guilt at that, that he caused her pain when the robe isn’t her fault at all. The duty and the title are already heavy enough burdens without his naivety and disappointment to add on.

“Rose,” he says. The name is bright and fresh in his mouth, a clipped syllable, as alive and eager as she is. He’s always liked her name. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Same to you.” Rose hops down from the counter of the stall she was sitting on and gestures to the sign. “I was just in to visit.” 

They have a new one, and it looks good: “The Sparrowfeathers” crisply printed on a white canvas banner in pretty, scrolling letters. Rose gives it a fond pat and gestures him closer. “We’ve just got a new line of steamed buns, you should try one, Mikleo!”

“Oh,” says Mikleo, “I don’t— I don’t really—”

“You don’t need to eat, right, I know,” says Rose. “I’m not the shepherd for nothing. But it doesn’t mean you can’t.” She presses a warm bun into his hands. “Come on, it’s good.”

He tears the top part of it off and watches the steam cut through the colors of the marketplace. For a moment they don’t speak.

Rose rocks back on her heels. “Good that you’re getting out of Elysia,” she says conversationally.

“Oh.” Mikleo doesn’t feel like he can meet her gaze—she was doing the grunt work of the shepherd while he had been holed up in his house. Their house. “Yes. I think so.”

“You think so.” Rose’s mouth curves up, sharp as the knives nestled against the small of her back, but friendlier, none of the cold cut of steel. “I think so too. Grief is sort of a weird process.”

“It’s sort of an ugly process.” It’s not the words Mikleo means to say, but the ones that have been lodged somewhere underneath his tongue for a long time, hot in the way that the dull glow of iron is hot. He wonders why it’s now that they finally make an appearance.

It’s probably because of Rose. She has a way of doing that to people.

“Ugly. That too.” Rose’s smile changes, now, tempers down into something a little kinder. Solidarity. “Are you mad? At him or yourself?”

Me, Mikleo wants to say. He wishes he could say it truthfully, but he just feels his shoulders cave a little bit further. “Him.”

“Hm. Me too.” Rose shrugs, tugs a strand of hair behind her ear. All her motions are so casual that they seem graceful, fluid. Mikleo wonders if she would be a water seraph in another life. “He’s the one that left me to deal with all this shepherd business, you know. Can’t help being a little— well, you can’t help it.”

“I know.” And, without really knowing why, “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.” The words are light; Rose tilts her head. “It’s alright to resent him, you know. I do too, a lot of the time.” She smiles sadly. “I’ve had some experience with resentment and forgiveness before.”

Again, Mikleo is reminded that he’s the last to lose someone on their shared journey. He opens his mouth halfway to speak and realizes that he doesn’t have anything to say. They’ve spent so long not mentioning him that the word Dezel still feels heavy and too sharp in his mouth. Sharp like loss. Sharp like reality.

Rose flicks him, lightly, on the nose, and he startles. “Don’t keep those emotions bottled up. Don’t want to get corrupted on us, do you? You’d have to call me. That’d be pretty embarrassing.” She dances backwards through the emptying streets, raises a hand in farewell. “Eat the bun!”

There one second, gone the next. She hasn’t changed much since they last met.

Mikleo eats the bun. It’s good.

…

“I’m so sorry about your grandfather,” is the first thing Alisha says to him.

It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since they defeated Heldalf, too busy with politics and grief and life to get together sooner. They’ve run into each other on the road, on Mikleo’s way out of the ruins near Ladylake. Not all of Alisha’s soldiers and escorts can see him, but the ones that do give the apple tree that they sit beneath a wide berth, pretending they don’t notice him. Mikleo can’t tell if it’s because he’s a seraph, or because of his reputation, or if grief still shows so fresh and vivid on him that it makes others uncomfortable.

It’s spring, and the tree is blossoming lushly in pink and white flowers, its branches thick with age. It looks like a shower of snow from a distance, like a cloud, so beautiful it aches. There are fallen petals around them, and Mikleo picks one up, rubs its velvet between his fingers. Here’s what you’re missing, he tells Sorey in his head. The resentment he expects to feel with the thought never comes.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m very sorry about Lady Maltran as well. I know how important she was to you.”

It is, if Mikleo’s being honest with himself, a wooden response. But Alisha smiles, a tender smile at the grass so bright green and new at their feet that it sears his eyes. “Thank you,” she says, and the gracious depth in her voice is more than Mikleo could ever hope to convey. “You’re very kind, Mikleo.” 

He caves a little at the words. If he were kind, he would be able to say something more than perfunctory words to express whatever he would ideally express to Alisha—sympathy, solidarity, comfort? He wants to run away from her hurt and grief, not console her. He wants to run from her perfect, endless kindness. 

Alisha tilts her head. “I hope you’re doing alright,” she says slowly.

“I am.” The words are too quick and they don’t come from deep enough in his chest. “Are you?”

“Yes,” says Alisha, still looking at him. “Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of ‘alright’. I’m fine. I’m managing. I have Rose.”

“But it’s not easy.” The trepidation shows through his words. 

Alisha’s fingers go up in her lap, a miniature of throwing them up in the air, and she smiles. “Nothing on this continent is easy.” Her fingers come down. “If it were, there wouldn’t be any need for people like me. Or you. Or any of us, really.”

Mikleo knows that us refers to their jumbled party of sub-lords and squires more than Alisha’s convoy of loyal soldiers. She values them, too; her bond with them runs much deeper than an ordinary commander’s—but us is a special little circle reserved for the shepherd’s companions. It almost makes him feel eighteen and fresh out of Elysia again, that giddy sense of belonging.

“Of course, I wouldn’t be complaining if all the malevolence on Glenwood decided just to up and disappear, along with several officials— I’m not naming names, but the corruption in Hyland is honestly unbelievable at points—” Alisha sighs, smiling ruefully. “This isn’t where I wanted this conversation to go.”

“No, please. What’s the latest gossip among Hyland nobility?”

“It’s not really gossip,” says Alisha, “more like blatant exploitation of the poor and the furthering of a system that never allows for upward mobility, as many things as we try, but— really. Now isn’t the time for my complaints. You don’t want to hear this.”

“Of course I do. You’re my friend.”

“You want to hear about the defeats I’ve suffered politically and the frustrations of working against my entire family? You’re not in the position, there’s no shame in that.”

“I do.” It comes out softer, less empathetic than last time, and he can hear the words fizzling before they even leave his mouth. It suddenly feels so tight on him, the weight of his head against the tree, his hands resting on his lap. “You’re my friend. I care about you.”

“I know you care, Mikleo,” says Alisha. “But you lost three people. I have my supports; take yours.”

“I don’t want to burden you more.” I don’t want to be another on your list of takers, he thinks. I don’t want to be another one to cause you pain. We’ve caused you enough already.

“I am offering.” Alisha takes one of his hands fiercely in hers. “Take it. If it burdens me it is because I want it to. Am I not your friend as well?”

Mikleo blinks at her, feeling something fast and warm in his chest. This is what’s so special about Alisha, he realizes. Her compassion is so endless and strong that it’s been able to conquer countries and end wars. It’s all conveyed in the warmth of her hands, the intensity of her gaze paired with the way her eyes scrunch up in the corners when she smiles. No wonder her soldiers would follow her to the death.

He takes a breath and folds his other hand over the soft skin of hers. She is offering. She is offering. 

There’s a heavy moment of silence. 

“It really hurts,” he says finally. “Losing people. Doesn’t it.” It hurts and it doesn’t, half-shying away from the possibility of hurting her and half-reaching, scrabbling, for her support.

But she is offering.

Alisha laughs, the glitter of tears in the corners of her eyes. “Yes,” she says, “yes. It really does.”

They laugh-cry together and the release is like a gasp of new air, like breaking through the surface of a pool and your first breath smells like apple blossoms.

 

IV. family

A year has passed and he’s so happy he could burst. Everything seems bright and new, the cool breeze as he breathes in Elysia’s clean mountain air, the springs he finds in the forest that bubble up crystal clear. He brings his journal with him everywhere and it’s a new kind of satisfaction to chart and record and sketch and work. He’s traveling, like he’s always wanted to, and it’s the best kind of feeling to be able to help destroyed farms and villages wherever he goes. It’s spring here. He’s spring here.

Every few weeks Zaveid drops by his house, and he regails Mikleo with stories of old adventures until they’re both heavy and warm with exhaustion. And Edna and Lailah are often together, and they sit on the warm dirt path in their garden while Mikleo waters the plants for them. And he finds he’s never too busy to drop into Alisha’s court and see her so alive and vibrant, fighting for her people and looking like this was what she was born to do. Rose is harder to catch, always moving, but she still calls him every few months. “Like old times,” she’ll say, and they’ll go into battle like they always used to, back to back, and when they armatize it feels right. Different, but exciting. Balanced. Alive.

Mikleo rests his chin in his hands and looks at Sorey’s light splitting the sky one day, his journal open on his lap, pen in hand. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year. His absence is still a cold, aching gap at his side that he knows will never be truly filled by anyone else. There isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t feel that loss. But he can’t believe how full his friends make his life. How happy.

He doesn’t know how he could have ever thought that he was alone.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for makin it through! apparently i cant post anything besides super old content but hopefully ill be able to write again soon :')
> 
> OH also the title is very loosely based on night by the altogether i highly recommend it!


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